The Remaking Of A Kitchen A Bright Idea Turns Into A Winning One When A Kitchen Gets A Streamlined, Spacious New Look That`s As Cheerful As It Is Functional.

February 9, 1990|By ELIZABETH ROBERTS, Special to the Sun-Sentinel

As a marriage and family therapist, Janet Cohen spent her day wrestling with other people`s problems. As an oncologist, her husband, Jim, specialized in treating cancer patients.

And for both of them, a cheerful home environment was key.

Problem was, their house looked like a lot of others in the Riverland section of Fort Lauderdale: It was an old-style Florida house with small rooms and few windows. So the Cohens went looking for something -- a kitchen, in fact -- to lift their spirits.

``We wanted to come home to something light,`` Janet explains.

Enter Barry Sugerman. The Fort Lauderdale architect had remodeled the Cohens` master bedroom and bathroom four years earlier. He had shown a knack for working with wood and light and those were the elements the Cohens wanted in their kitchen.

Eighteen months later, they had those elements in a kitchen that was larger, brighter and the final word in modern convenience: a spacious, airy ode to efficiency, penned with sparing lines and primary colors.

The face lift has been getting attention in a number of places since. In January, Sugerman and the kitchen were featured in Kitchen & Bath Concepts, a trade publication. The room also won a merit award in Renaissance 1989, an annual design competition sponsored by Remodeling magazine and the National Association of Home Builders Remodelors Council. The project was one of 29 nationwide winners pictured in the January issue of Remodeling, which also honored the contractor for the job, Bill Wozniuk of Allstate Construction Inc. in Hollywood.

The renovation cost the Cohens about $38,000, and that didn`t include the architect`s fee. But they say it was worth every dime.

Sugerman started with a U-shaped kitchen with dark, simulated wood cabinets and a low ceiling. On one side, it was separated from the family room by a pass-through that was too wide.

On another side, it was closed off by a long inside wall that defined a hall of sorts, and the sliding glass doors that formed the exterior wall of the family room provided neither ventilation nor a view.

Those were the architectural constraints. Beyond that, Sugerman had to work within the Cohens` preferences.

They wanted a kitchen that was light and bright. They wanted the accents red, a color they associated with cheerfulness. They were adamant about keeping the beige textured Italian ceramic tile they had chosen during their previous remodeling project seven years before. They wanted wood, lots of wood. And Jim thought he wanted a skylight like those Sugerman had introduced in other parts of the house.

The architect was able to comply with most of those requests, but he had other ideas for making the room brighter, too. He presented a plan to gut the kitchen and discard everything from the cabinets to the appliances. He proposed removing not one, but two walls. He suggested combining the kitchen and family room into a single space and raising the ceiling 1 1/2 feet, creating a room almost twice the size of the original kitchen.

Today, the focal point of the kitchen is a V-shaped island counter with rounded edges, set at an angle in a mosaic of Italian tile. The counter occupies a spot that once was a wall, and removal of the wall left an untiled patch on the floor. When the Cohens couldn`t match the beige tile used in the rest of the kitchen and family room, they picked a compatible chocolate and brown tile.

``It echoes the shape of the island counter and the texture is complementary, so we solved two problems at the same time,`` Sugerman says. ``It was like putting a magic carpet under the island.``

Surrounding the island and allowing it to double as a breakfast table are five stools with oak seats and red pipe legs that complement the kitchen perfectly. The Cohens actually had ordered other chairs, but there was a three-month wait on the order. After several weeks of eating standing up at the counter, they asked for something to use in the interim. The store sent over two of the stools, and as soon as the Cohens took the loaners out of the box, they knew they were right for the kitchen. They ordered three more.

The island counter itself serves an aesthetic as well as practical function. Its shape echoes the Thermador Cooktop stove. The custom-built soffit over the stove copies the curve, as well, and together, they draw the eye into the family room.

From the family room, the view is of three walls of cabinets. The neutral beige plastic laminate matches the color of the floor tile, and the fronts are punctuated by curving red handles and trimmed with a panel of oak that conceals the drawers. The finishing touch: an inch-wide red strip installed 36 inches off the floor, which lends cohesiveness to the red accents.

Inside the cabinets, the shelves can be pulled out on a track for easy access. They are so roomy the Cohens aren`t sure what to do with all the space. ``We`re growing into it, but we certainly had more than we needed at the start,`` Janet says.